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Comment by Jtarii | Hacker News Reader

You could get a surface level understanding of TCP, or 99% of topic areas in computing, in less than 4 weeks of study. You could not get a surface level understanding of literally any of the maths in the link in less than 4 weeks of study.

The vast majority of what computers do just isn't that complex. I'm not saying it isn't "complex" just that any reasonably smart person can understand how a computer works and still have other hobbies, basically no one can understand phd level mathematics without dedicating their entire lives to it.

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Speaking as someone who has run courses designed to take late teens / early 20somethings with a variety of backgrounds and tried to teach them 1st semester programming concepts in two weeks, I think anyone who thinks tcp/ip an easy four week dunk for most doesn’t remember how much they’ve already learned and take for granted.

Sure, if you’ve already learned enough groundwork, tcp/ip is accessible in weeks. The same is true of most of the algebraic concepts in play here. And both have rabbit holes you can also spend a much longer time going down (though here I am willing to give the edge to math which offers much greater opportunities for hypergeneralization and new vistas of abstraction along which not only specific rabbit holes but entire new generalizations of both rabbits and holes may be found).

This is not true, 99% is very exaggerated claim, but yeah you can learn 50-60% of the field at a surface level in months rather than years.

But you can have a surface level understanding of mathematical topics as well, ofc some topics might require deeper understanding, but that's true for both.

Any claims of being able to learn 99% of computing in a just 4 weeks even at surface level, is greatly underestimating your own knowledge built over the years perhaps, or perhaps underestimating your own ignorance.

The claim isn’t knowing 99% of the field but that 99% of topics are ones you could do a quick-and-dirty crash course and come out with some understanding.

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